Connecting the people and places of Southwest Detroit to each other and to the people and places of other communities through digital media programming, partnerships, and content.

Since 1999 Inside Southwest Detroit has been working to develop a vision and practice of community-driven narrative building and asset-based organizing, addressing and responding to community needs with existing community assets.

Programming, Partnerships, and Content.

Digital Media Workshops

Our photography and other digital media workshops teach storytelling by learning to craft imagery and language to be shared in online platforms. With the ever presence of shared narratives, comes a a need to own your story and to understand the privacy and security associated with this. Our digital media workshops teach people to effectively use the tools available and to maximize engagement by others with their media.

iSWD LiveMix with DJ Skipz

A live, interactive DJ set to build community and promote engagement and offline interaction broadcast through our Facebook feed. The LiveMix brings people together online in way that they can interact dynamically with the music, the artist, and with each other.

Started in January 2017, The iSWD LiveMix is Young Nation’s soundtrack to leveraging digital media to promote informed and engaged community.

See, Shoot, Share #SWDetroit Exhibit

Our first project to uplift community-driven narratives through an exhibit in person and online highlighted four young artists from Southwest Detroit. Community-driven narrative should be accessible—including being created with affordable and easy-to-use-tools, be well crafted or curated, and available in digital and/or physical spaces. Our featured photographers, Nyasia Valdez, Rosa Maria Zamarron, Antonio Cosme, and Chris Diegel each used their cell phones to capture and caption the images of their neighborhood. Their works were displayed at La Terraza restaurant and featured online.

Partnerships

Our partners are youth from southwest Detroit, residents hyper-locally, artists, and organizations-both for-profit and non-profit, nearby and internationally. We begin our processes of developing projects with broad input from those groups and narrow to a smaller committee that further develops and carries out. Our curation committee made up of artists and residents, is currently identifying visiting artists-in-residence to provide workshops, exhibitions and co-creation with youth and local artists.

Connection. Access. Participation.

"We have our own platform to speak to people through the music... because of that platform we get to let people know what's going on instead of having to call the news and be like, 'Can you please come over here and make a story about the community?'.

We get to send a message, like a commercial basically, but without corporations making (stories just so they can make) money off it. Its just the community being a community."-DJ Skipz